This course introduces class participants to the political significance and societal consequences of challenges facing U.S. and international policymakers. It is designed to help participants develop skills to analyze policy proposals and advocate for their preferred options for issues on the public policy agenda ahead. The class assumes basic knowledge about governing institutions and democratic processes, while recommending supplemental materials for further study to complement reading links provided. The course focuses on future policy challenges, while examining the broad historical context in which policies are adopted and implemented.
As the course evaluates how issues are advanced by private sector interests, non-governmental organizations, and government policymakers, it examines how groups become effective policy advocates. Particular attention is paid to how winning coalitions are formed and how issue framing shapes the outcome of policy campaigns. The goal is neither to produce partisan talking points, nor to favor one governance philosophy over others. Rather it is to clarify the public policy challenges ahead and to enhance participants’ understanding of how policy options are adopted in the real world arena of contemporary politics.

Taught By

Professor Gerry Warburg

Transcript

I have been struggling to understand why there is not a broader consensus behind infrastructure investment. Which is a material part of our competitiveness. And part, I would think, of a mainstream Chamber of Commerce, Republican Party agenda. Is, is, is that elusive highway bill to mass transit [CROSSTALK]. >> Well, Jay, Jay, let me just stop you. Let's take a look at Virginia last in the last I think it was in the last session of the >> Yes. >> Of the General Assembly. I supported the Transportation Bill that was signed by the Governor at that point. But the Chairman of the Transportation Committee in the House that helped orchestrate that. Joe of Loudoun County got knocked off in his primary. Bev Sherwood the district next door in Winchester got knocked. These are two of the districts that need transportation improvements probably more than anywhere else in the state. But you basically have ideological lines that get drawn. And it makes everybody else a little more reluctant to participate you know, in the deal at that point. When you have those kind of mantles, those heads on, on a mantle somewhere for voting for increased spending. So on transportation, it's very, very difficult. We all know this highway bill runs out, I think what, in a few months. the, the money just runs out. And it, but it's, that was like that on the farm bill. It cost the Republicans a couple seats in the Senate last time not being able to move a farm bill. These used to be routine matters. By the way, so did raising the deficit. And, and nothing is easy any more because you have these third party groups coming in here with a lot of money. You got the media playing, drumming this thing, and it just moves politics apart right and left. And people get afraid to act and you have groups on the right and left that come in and they win just enough races to intimidate everybody else. And, and, so the end result is nothing happens until you get a crisis. >> again, we go back to what's rewarded and what's punished and the the narrative about that has shifted radically. So, you can't really go home easily anymore. And say look at all the goodies I brought home. Look at that bridge I got built. Look at that school I got Look at, look at these new infrastructure investments that I was able to get. You might be challenged especially frankly on the Republican side of the aisle. That makes you a big spender. And so I, I don't care that it's for our district, you're spending too much. And so that bridge, or that you know, bag of [UNKOWN] that you thought was an asset is now a political liability. And especially if it costs money. And that's what Tom's saying he, he, locally here in Virginia. We saw the Chairman of the Transportation [LAUGH] Committee knocked off in his own primary. For champing a Republican governor's bill, because it involved new revenue. >> I, I want to draw you out Tom and, and, and Jerry on, on stuff we've, we've talked about in, in, in other forums here. And that is what's actually going on in the caucus, in the cloak room, in some of those moments of crisis. Tom you shared with a graduate seminar a really chilling story. About what it felt like to be a Republican leader on the House floor in, in the fall of 2008. When you were trying to pass a tort bill that George W Bush, President Bush had asked for. And yet, you were having trouble getting the votes to have it go through. And while the bill was going down, you could literally see on the TV in the cloakroom, the market going down about 100 points a minute, I believe. >> It dropped 800 points. And we still do. >> What do you say to fellow members when that's happening? How do you rally the troops? What kind of pressure does that put on you to both represent your district, to represent your party but to represent the institution and the country as well? >> This gets into your two basic models of democracy. You have your Democratic model where basically your members are your weather vanes and they're voting their districts. And then you have the Burkian model. Patterned after Edmund Burke, who I'm always reminded lost his next election after he made his famous speech to his citizens at Bristol. But Burke basically said that he owed his, the most diligence to his constituents. But most of all, he owed them his conscience, and if he betrayed that it was a. Which was a trust from Providence he betray the office. Very few Burkeans around, the incentives in politics are to get reelected. 80% of these members of the House, 80% in a bad year and usually more than that, have safe seats. We know what party is going to elect their, that district is going to elect. The question is who are they going to send. And so the incentives for members are, I'm in a safe seat, for 80% of the members. They don't care if your a Republican in a Republican district, what their Democrats or Independents think. They care what their Republicans think. And their Republicans watch Fox News, they listen to conservative talk radio. They're subject to the super pack pressures that can come in with unlimited moneys after them. With nobody actually to defend them on the other side. The same things happens on the Democratic side. The so the incentives right now are don't break from orthodox. There is no reward in this, now you do have some members from swing districts, and you have a few Berkians, that are willing to do that. The one Berkian I always say is Jim Cooper from mois I just he's a Rhodes scholar, he's from Nashville, I have the highest respect for him. You have a few on both sides who are willing to do that, but I was a whip for the troubled asset relief program. This is when you had all these bad mortgages out there that were sitting there. And the marketplace, we lost Lehman Brothers AIG. Everything's been going down the tube. And the Secretary of the Treasury came in and a group of economists, conservative and liberal said you gotta do this. Get these bad assets off the books and so we passed what was called the TARP program. And I was whipping for it and members said boy, I hope this thing passes. And I said, great, we need your vote. They said, well I can't vote for it. So you just told me you hope the thing passes. So, well, I, I'll never be able to explain this back home, it's you know, I can't vote for it. And so why are you here if you can't take a tough vote, what are you doing here? You think this is the best job you can get? You like the parking place? Is it the gym? What is it that's so good about this place that you can't take a tough vote? And it mark, marks 800 points. But they, the market plunged, we still defeated it. We had to come back and do it again after the Senate came back up and acted like the grownups and said we're going to pass it. And we passed pro, prob, I think, a worse bill the second time, we could have the first time, for those who were arguing against it. But that's the world we live in, the incentives are to get reelected. You like the democracy? That's, by the way, that's why you protest. That's why you'd want you elected leaders to know what you think, and we've got a pure democracy, sometimes, I think, to our detriment. >> Yeah, what's chilling about that is that it actually worked. TARP, for what it was designed to do, was to save the banking and financial system. From another, you know, 1929 clip. And it did. And it fairly rapidly did. And almost all of the money appropriated at the TARP has been paid back with some interest. Government made, in most cases, a profit. The fact that. The metrics show you it worked. Doesn't matter. That's, the same people Tom's talking about who voted against it the first time, would voted against again today if they had to if it came up. Because it's a matter of theology not a matter of efficacy. And that's a little scary to somebody like Tom or myself. Remember we began talking about the ethos, the ethos of getting something done as opposed to be, really being in office to make a point. There's something almost terrifying about people who only want to make a point given what they're willing to sacrifice. Including the viability of the U.S. economy when TARP was considered.

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